Inside Andrew's Mind
by Villain84
Summary: Andrew is a 20-year-old young man in college with Asperger Syndrome. Watch Andrew's emotions as they guide him along in his day-to-day life. Series of unrelated one-shots about what goes through my own mind during various events in my life. Male emotions at chapter 3 onward. Featuring minor crossovers, and my OC, a sixth emotion, Logic. Rated T for language.
1. Aqua Teen Hunger Force

Andrew sat in his room, at his desk, staring at his computer screen. He was watching a youtube video, a clip from _Aqua Teen Hunger Force_ that had come up in his recommended videos. Essentially the clip was about Carl trying to talk the Aqua Teens into coming for a swim in his pool so a water monster in it would eat them. In other words, Carl was trying to kill them.

* * *

"Carl you son-of-a-bitch!" Anger hissed through gritted teeth.

"Why do we keep watching this crap?" Disgust asked. "There's nothing likable about this show." She started counting out points on her fingers. "It's vulgar as hell, it's not funny, and every character is an unlikable asshole!"

"Frylock's a nice guy," Joy said with a shrug.

"Yeah okay, I'll give it that," Disgust admitted. "But Frylock is the only likable character. Other than him, there's nothing to like about any of the characters.

"Well… okay yeah Meatwad's a jerk too," Fear said speaking up, "but he's kinda cute at times."

"I guess," Sadness sighed.

"We don't like this show, and yet we keep watching these clips," Logic murmured.

"I just thought for sure this one would be entertaining," Joy said, trying to excuse her decision to watch it.

Everyone was silent for a moment.

"Oh, I have a brilliant idea!" Joy finally exclaimed. "Let's text Tom! We'll ask him why people like this show so much!"

The other emotions all smiled and nodded in agreement. Tom was Andrew's friend, the one, in fact, who first introduced him to the _Aqua Teen_. Perhaps asking him why he liked the show would shed some light on the matter.

About ten minutes later, Tom had replied to Andrew's text. They have had a brief conversation via texting on the matter. Finally Tom suggested that maybe this show was not Andrew's type of humor.

"Yeah that sounds about right," Fear said with a nod. Everyone was in agreement.

But then Tom sent another text, a link to another youtube video.

"No harm in taking a looksey," Joy said with a shrug as she hit the controls on the keyboard to make Andrew watch the video.

It showed Dr. Weird being sucked into his own butt as though it were a black hole.

All of the emotions burst out laughing, as did Andrew.


	2. The Birth of Logic

At some point during Andrew's sophomore year in college, Fear had called a meeting. The five emotions sat around at a round table in headquarters.

"Okay people!" Fear announced. He rose from his seat and started pacing around the room. There was a strong sense of power and authority in his step, as though he were an army drill instructor giving orders to his troops. The four other emotions sat in their chairs.

"In recent events," Fear continued, "we have had family relationships crippled, friends distancing us, and the school psychologists showing great concern. And all of them can be attributed to one thing; being too honest. Sharing our true feelings too much. This cannot go on!"

"Yeah, I've noticed it too," Sadness sighed with a nod.

"But all those shows we've watched," Joy said, "they all show how much secrets hurt and how good it is to get things off your chest and share your true feelings with those you trust."

"Well it hasn't been working too well for us," Fear replied. "We need to be more careful about this."

"It is pretty frustrating," Anger said. "People ask us questions, we tell them the honest truthful answer, and they get upset about it!"

"So, any ideas?" Fear asked.

Joy got up and started pacing. She started talking out loud.

"What we need is someone who knows that things happen for a reason. Someone who knows that if we do this, then that will happen.

"We need a sense of logic!" Sadness added. "That's what you're describing there."

Fear's face lit up. "YES! That's it! That's the answer! We need to give Andrew a sense of logic!"

For the next couple of hours, Headquarters was turned into a science lab, with Fear acting as the leading mad scientist. The emotions poured ingredients into a large cauldron, checked clipboards and calculators, made adjustments on computers. One thing Fear was very strict about was the addition of Andrew's medications; his Prozac and Vyvanse. Fear claimed that these were the most important ingredients.

Finally, their concoction was almost ready.

"Now!" Fear shouted. "Anger! Throw the switch!"

Anger rolled his eyes and did as told. He always hated being told what to do.

A bolt of lightning struck down onto the cauldron, making the mixture bubble and boil.

"YES! YES!" Fear screamed. "RISE MY GLORIOUS CREATION!"

Disgust stood next to Joy and Sadness, and whispered to them how silly and over-the-top Fear was being at the moment.

Finally, Anger cut the power, the lightning turned off, and all was silent. A cloud of smoke had gathered around the cauldron.

Nobody said a word. They all waited for something to happen, for the new emotion to come to life.

Finally, a brown hand rose from the cauldron and gripped the rim of it. A large mass of flesh rose from it, and pulled itself over the edge. It landed on its two feet, as if he were a regular person climbing out of a bathtub or hot tub.

The five emotions were huddled up together to see what would happen.

The new emotion was brown and tall, about as tall as Joy, and round and cylindrical like a big brown pill. He wore a white shirt, black tie, and brown pants.

Logic looked around the room and finally turned his gaze to the other emotions. His face bore a bored, uncaring expression.

"Hello," Logic said.

The others stayed silent a moment, finally Joy stepped forward. "Hey there!" She exclaimed. Welcome to Andrew's Mind. I'm Joy!"

She held out her hand to him for a handshake. Logic grabbed it and gave it a very hard squeeze.

"Woah!" She yelped, surprised by his strength. She inspected her hand once Logic released her. "That's… that's a strong handshake you got there," She chuckled.

"A firm handshake is favored over a weak one." Logic answered, his voice in a deep, unwavering monotone.

"He's perfect!" Fear exclaimed. He ran up to Logic to shake his hand as well. "I'm Fear. And this is Anger, Disgust, and Sadness," He gestured the other emotions. "We need your expertise to help Andrew make better decisions!"

"Very well then," Logic answered. His face and tone never wavered. "But first, where are the towels? I should clean up this mess." He gestured the puddle that had formed at his feet from dripping water from the cauldron.

Disgust and Sadness each raised a hand and pointed to the closet where the towels were kept.

"Thank you," Logic said. Without another word, he made a beeline straight for the closet.


	3. Summer Heat

At around 11:00 one night in June, Andrew lay awake in his bed. The lamp on his nightstand was on, and his phone in his hand, and the door closed and windows open. He had just finished masturbating, and was just about to turn out the lights and sleep. The only thing bothering him was the heat and humidity that he suffered from nearly every night during the summer.

Anger's temper was just as fiery in Headquarters. The six emotions had fans on and air conditioning at the max. Disgust was drinking a glass of water.

"GAH!" Anger growled. "This heat is killing us! Just look at this!" He pointed to one indicator on the big screen. "Just look at how high the discomfort levels are! God I hate summer!"

"Eh, you and me both, brother," Disgust replied.

"Yeah, this is why we love winter so much," Sadness said. "It's so much better to be cold and to get all snug under the covers than to sweat to death in this heat."

Anger continued to grumble. "Mom and Laura are always saying how much they hate winter! Always complaining about it! Always saying they want summer to come! No more snow! Well, they got what they wanted! I hope they're happy!"

After a few minutes, Logic spoke up. "You know, a lot of times when we were young, Mom and Laura suggested opening the door along with the windows to keep the air flowing."

"Open the door?" Fear repeated, obvious fear in his tone.

"Come on Fear," Joy said. "We are twenty years old. We're not afraid of the dark anymore! I mean what's going to get us? Ghosts? Vampires? Murderers? Animatronics? We all know none of that is real!"

"Well actually, there's still the occasional sleep paralysis episodes," Sadness added, reminding him.

Joy rolled his eyes. "Okay, but aside from that. And we haven't had one of those in months anyway."

"Well it's not just that," Fear said. "We're so use to having the door closed, giving ourselves privacy, closing ourselves off from the rest of the house and the family. Opening the door is letting all that in."

"Look bub," Anger growled at him, "Would you rather toss and turn in this oven we call a bedroom, or step outside the comfort zone and get more comfortable?"

"Well, uh, well-"

"Let's just give it a try," Joy suggested, already imputing the commands on the keyboard for Andrew to get out of bed and close the door. "We can always close it again if we don't like it."

Andrew opened the door. Because the rest of the family was asleep by now, the rest of the house was dark. The only light was a very faint blue one coming from the fridge and the dishwasher in the kitchen.

In the morning, Andrew found that he had slept very well and very comfortably with the door open. He did not need to sleep under his covers either, just hugged them for a little comfort, like one may hug a teddy bear.

"Hey, does it bother anybody that we actually followed Mom and Laura's advice?" Anger asked in the morning.

Everybody shook their heads and replied "nope" and "not really" in chatters.

"Besides," Joy added. "They made that suggestion years ago, so it feels somewhat like we made the decision on our own accord."

 **Author's Note: One of my reviewers has suggested that I make the emotions all male since Andrew is male. Beforehand, I had a lot of thoughts on that matter.** **At first I found writing these one shots easier by keeping the emotions the same gender as Riley's.** **I do remember in the trailer we see the mom's emotions are all female and all the dad's are male, but then you have Riley having both boy and girl emotions. That kind of confused me. I can think of two reasons why they made it like that; one, because Riley is sort of a tomboy and has boyish characteristics, or two, since she's still a kid and when she gets older she'll develop female emotions (though the second reasoning is less likely I suspect). But talking it over with that one reviewer made me realize that it would make more sense to make the emotions all male. And so I've decided that from here on in, that's what I'll do.**


	4. The Dream Machine

It had been a good day for Andrew. He did not have to go to work that day, so he had spent the entire day in his Mom's basement playing Skyrim. Fear and Sadness were both somewhat upset he had not accomplished anything that day, but their worries were dismissed knowing that all seven of them, Andrew and emotions alike, had fun with the game. Joy and Logic reminded them that it was good for Andrew to take advantage of his opportunity to have days like this, also reminding Fear that Andrew may not have very many more days to do this.

Now Andrew was in bed, the lamp on his nightstand on. He had masturbated and then watched various youtube videos on his phone and now was too tired to watch any more. He put the phone down, slipped on his retainers, flicked the lamp off, and settled down to sleep. It took a little fidgeting to find a comfortable position, but he found it at last.

"Alright, good work today, people!" Fear announced as everyone got up from their seats. Most systems were powering down for the night, aside from the ones necessary for functioning. The emotions were about to get ready for bed. "Now let's get a good night sleep." And then he remembered something. "Oh, and someone turn on the dream machine please?"

"I'll get it!" Joy exclaimed in delight. While everyone else left for their beds, Joy zipped over to what looked like a giant blender; a large glass bottle atop a metal base. At the base was a control panel labeled "Dream Machine." The panel was not as complicated as the main panel, having only a couple of buttons and dials and a large lever.

Joy simply pulled the lever, and the machine roared to life, making the sound of a vacuum cleaner.

Knowing already his work was done, Joy headed off to join the other emotions in getting ready for bed.

The bottle began to fill with multicolored memory orbs, all randomly chosen, all sucked in from Andrew's memory storage. The orbs all bore the colors of the Andrew's emotions. The most prominent colors were yellow for joy and purple for fear, while there seemed to be few of the others. The orbs bounced and danced around in the bottle, mixing up the memories

At around 3:00 that morning, while it was still dark out, Andrew had slipped off into REM sleep, and the dream machine was in full throttle. The memories have created various images, which traveled through the system onto the big screen.

Andrew dreamt of many things that night, and to his delight, he remembered most of them in the morning. To him, almost every dream was a glorious adventure. In high school, a friend had given him a dream journal to keep track of his dreams. He had finished the journal long ago, filling every single page.

Tonight, he dreamt of playing more Skyrim, facing off against a challenging boss; a mysterious, invisible entity simply known as "He Who Brings Winter." Andrew was facing him in a pitch-black void, with only the snow on the ground visible. It was such a thrill.

Next, before the battle ever finished, he was back at College, in Professor Moon's Irish Literature class. Everybody else seemed to be on top of things; everyone had a journal entry of that previous night's reading, but Andrew did not. Andrew was both horrified and ashamed.

After that, he found himself at the Baltimore Convention Center, just like he had gone to for BronyCon with his friend Dan and his brother Mike. But today, there seemed to be a convention about handicapped pets. Andrew strolled around seeing animals with prosthetics and wheelchairs, and soon came to one area full of pot-bellied pigs.

To Andrew, pot-bellied pigs were some of the cutest domestic animals on the planet, only slightly higher on the scale than pugs. He had an ambition to adopt a pig after he finished college and moved out into his own apartment (one that allowed pets, of course). He would name the pig Kenny, after his favorite character from The Walking Dead.

In the morning, while Andrew went about his morning routine, the emotions would watch over the recorded footage of what Andrew remembered from his dreams.


	5. Exercise

Andrew had the day off from work, so he decided to go to the gym that morning for a decent workout. Now he was doing a workout where he would hold himself up on a device with arms like a chair, both hands gripping handles on the arms. He would lift his legs up over and over again to work his core muscles. By now he was definitely feeling some burning in his torso.

In the mind, the emotions had a difficult time keeping the body motivated enough to continue the workout. Anger, for one, was complaining about how tiring it was, and was arguing that they should abort the workout. All it would take was a push of a single button on the console, and the body would cease its activity.

"We're exhausted!" Anger whined. "Just look at our pain and discomfort levels!"

"Well you know what they say," retorted Joy. "No pain, no gain."

At this point, Joy and Fear were the only ones who were really fixated on continuing the workout.

"Come on guys!" Fear said. "I know we're all exhausted, but we gotta keep at it! We gotta stay in shape. Don't want Andrew to get all fat and mushy."

"What's the point?" Sadness sighed. "We only come here once or twice a week, and we never see any major results. Let's face it; we're fat. We're not attractive. No wonder we can't get a girlfriend." He waddled over to the couch and slumped into his seat.

"Ah come on!" Joy said. "We DO see results. Our muscles are gonna hurt tomorrow. Even the core muscles. That's a good sign, right?" Fear and Disgust both nodded in agreement. "And we're not THAT fat, right?" The other emotions were a little more unsure about that.

Joy paused for a moment after the mixed answers. "Oh… well… uh… I'm sure we'll be less fat after this! I mean besides, even just doing a crappy workout here for two hours a week… I mean… that's gotta be better than nothing, right?"

Again, mixed answers from the other emotions.

"Oh hey!" Fear exclaimed. "Has anyone been keeping track of how many reps we did this set?"

No one has.

Joy stammered a moment before speaking up. "Let's just say we're at fifteen and stop at twenty from here." Everyone was in agreement.

Finally, after what Andrew thought was thirty sets of about twenty repetitions, he got down from the machine and went over to the treadmill, the grand finale of each of his workouts.

Andrew found himself doing surprisingly well today on the treadmill. He was jogging at six miles per hour, more than his usual five or five and a half. After ten (out of thirty) minutes of jogging at this pace, fatigue began to set in.

"Ugh we're so thirsty!" Sadness complained. "Let's have a sip of water." He was about to touch the control panel to command Andrew to grab his water bottle when Logic smacked his hand away.

"I think that is a bad idea," Logic explained in his usual monotone. "Whenever we drink water in the middle of a run, we always feel more tired and find it difficult to keep running."

After hearing this, Fear got an idea. "Hey come to think of it, do you think we get cramps from the water?" He asked Logic.

"Possibly," Logic answered.

"Okay then," Fear continued. "No water."

But still, Andrew felt tired, and after insistence from Joy, Anger and Sadness, Andrew lowered the speed of the treadmill for three and a half for three minutes before returning to six. The emotions thought of this as a compromise, both physically and amongst themselves; Andrew was pacing himself.

"Oh crap," Sadness exclaimed at one point. "I just realized we forgot to pack an energy bar today."

"Aw man," Joy moaned. "We love those things!" Already his mouth was watering at the thought of those delicious cookie-dough flavored delicacies.

"Oh well," Fear said with a shrug. "Not the end of the world. We'll just remember one for next time."

Finally, after thirty minutes, the last six minutes being on speed of six, the machine slowed down to three for the five-minute cooldown. Andrew was holding on to the handholds for support. These handholds could also measure the user's pulse. The result of the reading made Fear jump.

"It's at 195 beats per minute!" He exclaimed. "That's so high! Usually we have it at 180-something! No wonder we feel pain in our chest now!" He indicated the discomfort meter. "Oh man I really hope we don't get a heart attack!"

"Can this even cause a heart attack?" Sadness asked with a shrug.

"I don't know!" Fear replied.

Anger and Disgust turned to Logic, expecting him to come up with an answer.

"Don't look at me," Logic answered, without even looking in their direction. "I only know what Andrew and the rest of you know."

But sure enough, after the cooldown, Andrew's heart rate had slowed down. His workout for the day was done. He chugged down the rest of his water that he had waited so long to drink, and left the gym, ready to go home and shower.


	6. Fanboy Island

**Author's Note: I saw Inside Out today with my brother. It was awesome! It is now up there as one of the best animated movies I've ever seen.**

 **I want to say something about the dream machine chapter. At the time when I wrote that, I didn't know about Dream Productions, and made my own way of how dreams were created. I was sort of right though in how memories were used to generate the dreams.**

 **Anyway, enjoy the chapter!**

The day had finally come. Sunday. Andrew had no plans, and neither did his brother, Mike, and so Joy had the wonderful idea to finally take the opportunity to see Inside Out.

Mike would have gone with his friends, but they were all busy that weekend, and Andrew could tell Mike didn't want to wait until next weekend, so he thought it would be nice to take him. It was one of those "Kill two birds with one stone" scenarios.

The two brothers were finally at the crowded theatre, and have found some nice seats where they could get a good view.

"OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!" Needless to say, all six emotions, even Logic, were all overflowing with excitement and giddiness. They jumped and danced and screamed at each other, but none were happier than Joy. They could barely contain their excitement even as the trailers ended and the short film began (Pixar's usual formula of having a short film before the feature presentation).

"I wonder how much of our predictions were right!" Fear shouted.

"I wonder if they'll use info we've picked up in all those psychology classes!" Anger added.

"I think the bigger question is will we remember what we learned in those classes!" Sadness said in a matter-of-fact tone.

"I can't wait to see shipping fuel between Joy and Sadness!" Joy exclaimed. "The two of them stuck together, forced to go on a journey and find their way back. The writers may as well be screaming at us 'ship them! Ship them! Ship them!'

Sadness quietly slipped behind Fear and Anger, farther away from Joy, his eyes shifting back and forth.

"Oh! Wonder if we'll finally see some ship fics for the two of them online!" Joy shouted, continuing his rant. Oh! Maybe some lemons! Maybe threesomes with Disgust! Oh it'll be so saucy!" He was hunched over, wringing his hands, and laughing maniacally like a mad scientist.

Everyone was quiet for second, all eyes turned to Joy with looks mixing between disgust and shock. "You're really weird sometimes, ya know that?" Disgust stated, finally breaking the silence.

The silence was further broken by a fax machine at the corner of the room spitting out more feed from the islands.

"More incoming messages from Fanboy Island!" Sadness announced merrily.

For the last half-hour, since arriving at the theatre, Fanboy Island had been going crazy and overloading with signals, messages and activity. It housed incarnations of all of Andrew's favorite movies, TV shows, books, video games, any work of fiction. The island was usually very chaotic. It was decorated with statues and idols of various characters; buildings that matched their counterparts from the movies. On a typical day, you would find the four girls from Team RWBY having lunch at a café, only for it to be interrupted by Gollum crashing down on their table. Zombies would be running rampant through the streets, being chased away and toasted by Fire Nation soldiers. Batman would be flying and grappling from one rooftop to another and wave high to the Dragonborn, who was riding Paarthunax. Aku and Dormin would be arm wrestling. Twilight Sparkle would be asleep in her castle bedroom, only for her dreams to be invaded by Freddy Krueger.

On days like today, when a particularly special event happened relating to any of these fictions occurred, the island would be in full throttle. Every character would be resuming their usual activities, but this time, seemingly in fast-forward, and occasionally shouting out how happy they were about the event, or the movie in this particular instance. Some were wearing _Inside Out_ labeled clothing or waving flags.

Finally, the short film, which was about a volcano feeling lonely, ended, and the feature presentation started. The screen went black. Riley's Joy's voice started voicing over.

"Guys! Shush!" Fear barked. "Seats! It's starting."

"Oh man oh man oh man!" Joy chanted as he slid into his seat.

Twelve wide eyes and six enormous grins were pointed at the screen – the one that looked through Andrew's eyes at the movie screen.

Barely a couple of minutes into the movie though, the spell the movie had cast over them was interrupted by a chorus of high-pitched screams of terror.

The six emotions ran to the window and looked out to see the screams coming from Fanboy Island. Debris seemed to be falling off the edges into the Memory Dump below, and the characters barely struggling to stay on the island, clinging to the edges, pulling each other up.

"Even for Fanboy Island, that's a bit unusual," Anger stated, a bit of concern in his tone.

As he finished his sentence, on the screen appeared a notification for a FaceTime chat. The emotions ran back to the consol. Fear hit the button to accept the FaceTime request. On the screen in a smaller pop-up appeared a blue mind worker, the burning structures of Fanboy Island behind him. He was clearly exhausted and terrified and panting heavily.

"Worker! Report!" Fear barked.

"Sir!" The Mind Worker panted. "There… the island… there's so much hype energy! The Fanboy Island is so active! And one of the characters… absorbed some of the energy and now he's going berserk!"

"What character?" Fear demanded.

"Dor… Dormin... from _Shadow of the Colossus_!"

The worker looked behind himself and screamed before being knocked away by a giant hand of black smoke. The screen went to static.

" _Shadow of the Colossus_ ," Sadness repeated. "Such a sad story. And at the same time such a brilliant one."

In the real world, Andrew was constantly whispering over and over again, "Dormin, Dormin, Dormin, Dormin…" Though not loud enough so anybody else could hear him.

"We gotta get down there and stop Dormin before he tears the island apart." Fear announced.

"Wait!" Joy exclaimed. "What about the movie?"

"Huh, you're right," Fear replied, a finger on his chin.

"I'll stay and watch it," Logic announced, waddling to the panel. "Whenever you need an update, call me."

"Sounds good." Fear said with a nod. "Alright boys! Let's get down there!" Each of them grabbed a stun gun that was held on a rack.

* * *

They hoped aboard the Train of Thought and arrived at Fanboy Island. They could see characters scrambling around, trying to find a place to hide, pulling their neighbor to safety. A small orchestra who played Andrew's favorite soundtracks were playing the _Shadow of the Colossus_ soundtrack, "A Despair-Filled Fairwell."

The five emotions charged into the ruins of the city. It wasn't long before they came across a massive humanoid creature with a pitch black body, glowing blue eyes, and horns like those of an ox. The emotions recognized him immediately. He had a fist raised and was about to slam down on a small cluster of fleeing stormtroopers.

"Dormin!" Joy shouted.

The giant fiend hesitated his attack, and turned to face the emotions.

"Hey there buddy!" Fear called out. "Listen. Umm… think you can calm down a little?"

Dormin's voices said something in their usual deep, echoing, ghastly tone. None of the emotions understood what he was saying though. It must have been in Japanese.

"Anybody understand that?" Fear asked.

"Nope," Joy replied with a shrug. "None of us speak Japanese."

Dormin then raised his fist again and was about to lunge.

"Okay he's not up for talking." Anger said. "FIRE!"

The five drew out their stun guns and open-fired at Dormin.

The bullets of lightning seemed to hit the demon's chest with no affect, like a flock of birds crashing into a brick wall. The fist came down and slammed onto the street.

The emotions were scattered from each other by the shockwave.

His hand still down, Dormin, swatted across the street with the back of his hand. He struck Joy and Sadness, sending them both flying over towards the edge of the island.

Sadness grabbed the ledge with one hand, and Joy's hand with the other. Anger rushed over to help them.

"Come on!" He shouted. He grabbed Sadness's hand and pulled him up, then they both pulled up Joy.

"Retreat!" Fear shouted. Upon his command, the five emotions ran away and hid behind one of the massive statues of Rarity the Unicorn.

Dormin roared and unleashed a torrent of blue fire into the air.

"Now what?" Anger asked.

"Well I'd say this rage is enough to tear apart the entire mind," Fear answered. "I don't know what we can do to stop him."

"Oh hey," Joy spoke up. "I wonder how the movie's going."

"Oh yeah we should get an update from Logic," Fear nodded in agreement. He took out his phone and called Logic. Everyone else was silent, almost immediately forgetting the danger just down the street from them.

"Hello?" Logic's voice answered at the other end.

"Logic!" Fear replied. "How's the movie going? What's happening right now?"

"Joy and Sadness just met the pink elephant guy we keep seeing in the advertising." There was a pause, some inaudible dialogue from the movie, and then Logic spoke again. "His name is Bing Bong. And he is in fact Riley's imaginary friend."

"Okay great thanks!" Fear hung up and relayed the information to the other emotions.

"Okay, so imaginary friends can exist in here too!" Joy stated.

"Wait!" Disgust shouted. "If that's true, then that means-"

Before he could finish his sentence, a whirlwind of black smoke suddenly appeared next to the statue before him.

The smoke cleared almost instantly, revealing a man in a black cloak, much like the ones worn by the Sith in _Star Wars_. He turned towards the emotions and pushed back his hood, revealing a face identical to Andrew's. The emotions knew who this was.

"WERDNA!" Joy exclaimed. They all rushed out to hug and fist-pound Andrew's imaginary friend, the one Andrew would share his thoughts with on his tape recorder, the one who Andrew liked to talk in the mirror like Gollum would.

"It's nice to see you all," Werdna said ins a gentle, yet somehow unsettling voice. It was the kind of tone a scheming, charismatic villain might use when speaking to anybody. "A little backup is appreciated. I've watched dozens of mind workers try to shoot him and get thrown over the edge."

"What do we do?" Fear asked. "How do we stop him."

"Well I think the answer is quite obvious," Werdna answered. "We defeat him the same way he was defeated in the game: sealing him into a pool with the magic sword." He reached down one of his cloak's sleeves and pulled out the very sword he mentioned. "I took the liberty of digging through some of the rubble here and found this."

"Great!" Disgust exclaimed. "Now all we need is a pool!"

"We could head over to Workout Island," Sadness suggested. "There's a lap pool there."

"That should work!" Joy said.

"Oh! But of course, we'll all need our Lord Emon Masks!" Werdna said. With a wave of his hand, each emotion's face was enveloped in a puff of smoke. When the smoke cleared, each one was wearing a wooden mask resembling an owl.

They ran for the bridge from the island into Long Term Memory. Dormin had leapt across the gap and was now knocking down the shelves of memories.

The emotions all scrambled and split up and managed to weave their way through the maze and finally, one at a time, all arrived at Workout Island.

This island had replaced Swimming Island in Andrew's early college years. Swimming Island was around for most of High School when Andrew swam for the high school swim team. By his sophomore year in college, however, he no longer swam for a team, and found himself having more fulfilling exercise from running on a treadmill and lifting weights, and was going to the pool to swim laps less and less. Finally at one point, Workout Island appeared, and Swimmer's Island collapsed into the Abyss.

Werdna and the Emotions all ran past weights and treadmills and other exercise equipment until finally they arrived at the island's lap pool.

"I got this," Werdna said. Sword in his hand, he approached the pool. He raised the sword up in the air, as though letting the skies above see it, and then tossed it into the pool.

"Be gone foul beast!" Werdna shouted as the sword hit the water and sunk below the surface. A bright light engulfed the sword, and spread all throughout the pool until it became a rectangle of celestial energy.

Dormin slammed another case of the memory shelves, and then turned around and noticed his back being chipped away, small puffs of black smoke being sucked off of his body and towards a bright light coming from Exercise Island.

Dormin knew what was happening. He clawed at the ground under him as the winds pulling him towards the island became stronger and stronger. More and more smoke ripped from his body. He felt his form shrinking as more of his energy was yanked from him.

Finally he could hold on no more and lost his grip. What was left of him was flung threw the air towards the island, and finally landed in the pool. Once he was under the water, the bright light faded, and the water disappeared. No Dormin. No sword. Nothing.

The emotions were all silent for a moment, waiting for someone to say something or something else to happen.

"Well, I'm glad that's over," Disgust said finally.

"Man, look at this mess!" Sadness sighed, looking out at all the destruction.

"Oh don't worry," Werdna said, patting Sadness's shoulder. "Nothing serious. The Mind Workers can fix everything. But I think you guys should hurry back to Headquarters and see the rest of that movie."

Soon after, all six emotions were all together back in Headquarters watching the movie. The plot had reached the third act. Andrew had stopped repeating Dormin over and over again and was entirely focused on the movie.

Nearing the end, Riley's Sadness and Joy had come to an understanding together. Now they were both working together to give Riley a moment with her parents, allowing Riley to break down and sob about moving, and also be happy that she was in her parents' arms. Joy and Sadness were holding hands as they worked the panel.

"Oh my God! They're holding hands!" Andrew's Joy squeaked.

The next scene showed a new memory appearing in the shelf with a blue and yellow swirl; a memory that was both sad and joyful.

"Aw it's like they had a baby!" Andrew's Joy squealed.

"Dude, please –PLEASE -for the love of God -don't go there!" Disgust pleaded.


	7. Driving

**Disclaimer and Author's Note: Thank you all so much for all your reviews!**

 **I do not own the songs used in this chapter. They belong to Andy Grammer and Pitbull. I do not profit from this story.**

Andrew was in his car on his way to work. He was currently stopped at a red light at an intersection.

In his mind, all six emotions were seated at their usual spots behind the control panel. Since Andrew was driving, the panel was in driving mode. With the flip of a switch, the panel's controls completely rearranged, the most noticeable difference being the appearance of a steering wheel identical to the one in Andrew's car, which Fear was currently steering.

"Aw man," Fear murmured as he glanced through Andrew's view to the car's clock. "Only fifteen minutes until our shift starts! Are we gonna make it?"

"It's such a drag that we got work today," Sadness moaned. "It would be so nice if we could just stay home all day and play more _Skyrim_."

"GAH!" Anger hissed. "It's this damn traffic light! We've been sitting here for two minutes! Why does this one always take so long?"

Logic leaned over to look across at Anger. "Anger," he said calmly, "fretting about it won't accomplish anything. You may as well calm down."

Anger huffed and crossed his arms. He knew Logic was right.

Disgust kept tapping one button that caused Andrew to keep flipping through radio stations.

"There's nothing good on!" He whined. When they didn't get static or advertisements, it was still hard to find a song that would fit Andrew's liking.

"I'm happy as long as we don't get static or ads," Anger grunted. "God! I mean if I had a nickel for each time we got one of those…"

Finally, the light turned green, and Andrew drove up the road and onto the highway. Right about that time, finally a pop song was heard on the radio.

"Oh there!" Joy shouted. "This one's good!"

They listened for a moment. Finally a good song they could all enjoy.

"Aw yeah!" Disgust cried. "Now _that's_ what I'm talking about!"

In their excitement, Disgust and Joy jumped out of their seats and started singing along with the song, pretending they held microphones.

" _So nah nah honey, I'm good_

 _I could have another but I probably should not_

 _I got somebody at home,_

 _And if I stay I might not leave alone!_ "

Joy reached out in front of Fear and hit a button on the panel, causing Andrew to bob his head along with the catchy song.

"Um, okay," Fear muttered. "Nothing wrong with that, I guess." He knew what was coming. The same shenanigans always happened whenever Andrew went out driving.

There was little traffic out on the highway today. Lots of space in between cars. Joy seemed to notice this. Still singing along with Disgust, he slid in beside Fear, and pushed another button, causing Andrew to step harder on the gas and accelerate.

"WOAH WOAH! WOAH!" Fear screamed. "TOO FAST TOO FAST TOO FAST!" He shoved Joy away from the panel, and slammed his hand on another button, causing Andrew to break and slow down. They were still quite a safe distance from the next car ahead of them, but Fear would not have anyone taking chances.

Eventually the song ended, and then on came a Pitbull song.

"PITBULL!" Joy and Disgust screamed in unison.

Joy slid up to the panel again. "I love this song! It's one of those songs that I think would go great with a fight scene! Like how about _Shadow of Mordor_?" He slipped a daydream USB into a slot. On the screen appeared a pop-up of Talion fighting off a band of orcs. It was very similar to Andrew's memories of playing _Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor on_ his 360.

The orcs shouted their familiar curses such as "Man-Swine" and "Man-Filth" at Talion as they surrounded him and he clashed blades with them. Talion danced within the mob just as Joy and Disgust were dancing in the center of the control room.

At the line "swing your partner round and round, end of the night it's going down." Joy and Disgust linked arms and danced in a circle. Meanwhile in the daydream, Talion grabbed one orc in a headlock, swung him around in a circular and sent him smashing into another charging orc, knocking them both down.

"Uh guys," Fear stammered, "this is really distracting. Can we please turn this off and focus on the road?" He was struggling to ignore the daydream and pay more attention to the road.

No good. Nobody heard him. Now Anger and Sadness were also joining in and dancing along with Joy and Disgust. They kept slipping other memories into the slots and pushing buttons to summon other daydreams, most of which were fight scenes or dance scenes from movies and shows. One was of a clip from the second _Lord of the Rings_ movie; one orc shouting "Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!" which Joy did a hilarious imitation of.

While the others were having fun, Fear kept his eyes glued to the screen, forcing himself not to even glance at any of the memory or daydream popups. He also gave up trying to talk the others into sitting down. Both he and Logic knew that when they got this wild, there was no stopping them until they reached their destination.

"You know Logic?" He whispered to his side. "It's hard to resist the urge to join in with them."

"You won't though," Logic replied, his eyes also locked on the road. "You and I are both aware that the very second you let go of the wheel, we'll veer off the road, and most likely get into an accident."

"Yeah, that's true," Fear replied meekly.


	8. Island Tour

**Joy's POV:**

Hey there. Joy here. I thought it would be nice to have a chapter showing off all the islands that represent the various aspects of Andrew's personality. You may already be familiar with Workout Island and Fanboy Island. Well, here are the other islands.

First off we have Gamer Island, because Andrew _loves_ video games! That is one thing about Andrew that hasn't changed over the last twelve years of his life. That island's been around since the days of elementary school. The core memory that powers this island is him playing the _Spyro the Dragon_ games on his Playstation back in those days. Good times!

Then there's Writer's Island. Andrew's really into writing and reading, which also explains why he's an English major and a fanfic writer. When he starts on a paper for his classes, he really gets into it. You ever watch that show? _Sherlock_? You know how excited Benedict Cumberbatch gets when he's solving a mystery? That's basically how Andrew feels when he gets into his writing. From an outside point of view, the island looks like a typical library. There's also an empty room down there somewhere with a desk and a typewriter where Andrew's inner writer resides.

Next we have Friendship Island, which is much like Riley's island from the actual movie. The island holds statues for each of Andrew's closest friends. Right now there's monuments to Ethan and Austin, Andrew's two best friends from high school whom he still keeps in touch with. There's statues of his best friends from college; Tom, Steve, Dan, and Mahiro. Andrew has had other friends in the past, but sadly, he lost touch with some of them. When that happens, those statues crumble and the debris falls into the dump, forgotten. Their memories remain though. And besides, we try to look on the bright side and think about what great friends Andrew has now.

What's funny though is that right next to Friendship Island, we also have Loner's Island. As much as Andrew loves his friends, he still likes to be alone every now and then – away from judgmental eyes. The Island is basically a large, empty, flat marble floor. In the center you'll find a single statue of Andrew staring off into the distance. God knows what that lonely statue is thinking about.

There's Alcoholic's Island. Now let me clarify that Andrew is _not_ an alcoholic – he doesn't _need_ alcohol or depend on it. To him it's just a treat, no different from sweets. He just likes the buzz. It makes him feel good, invincible even. The core memory for this one is the night that Andrew chugged eight beers. In the spring of his sophomore year, he asked his friend Mahiro, who was 21 at the time, to buy him a pack of beers at the liquor store down the street from the college. He wanted to experiment and see what it would be like to have many drinks. So he had eight beers in just a half-hour, and he felt really good – all of us did. I always expected we would find Sadness coming here the most. That's what we've learned from TV and movies over the years - when people are upset or depressed, they drink to cope with it. But ironically, I'm the one who who goes down there most often. Fear is a little worried about how often Andrew will drink when he turns 21. I'm not as worried though, and of course there will be no drunk driving.

So next we have, again just like Riley, Honesty Island. If there's one thing Andrew got from his upbringing, it's that lying is bad. Man, if we had a nickel for each time Andrew use to lie to his parents and how much trouble he got in for it, how they always eventually found out… and so nowadays Andrew is just outright a terrible liar.

After that, on a slightly darker note, we have Revenge Island. If you hurt Andrew, he gets determined to hurt you back for it. You could blame Anger for a lot of that. The core memory we have for this one dates back to Andrew's sophomore year again; his roommate, David, had tried to help Andrew with his problems, but in reality, he was making it much harder for Andrew, making him feel terrible. So long story short, Andrew beat David at his own game, and made him cry. It felt so satisfying to Andrew.

On a lighter note, next there's Responsibility Island. This island gives Andrew the mental strength he needs to hold up to his responsibilities and do the things that others have entrusted him to do. It helps him keep up with jobs and school and be there for his family and friends. If Logic could have his own opinion on things, this island would probably be his favorite.

And finally, we have Movie Island, showing off Andrew's passion about movies; not just the stories and characters like Fanboy Island, but also the science behind how they are made and how their scripts are written. We have charts that show that about seventy percent of what Andrew talks about with Ethan and Austin – both of whom are film majors no less – involve film and TV, and Andrew is even considering going to film school after college.

And there you have it; all of the islands that make Andrew who he is.


	9. Sleep Paralysis

It was the middle of the spring semester at college. Andrew had a frustrating day. He had a paper for one of his English classes that he had to get started on, but he didn't know what to say on it. He went to bed that night feeling frustrated.

It was Fear's turn for Dream Duty that night. It was a good dream that night; he knew Andrew would be enjoying this one.

However, down in Dream Productions, something went wrong. One of the mind workers slipped up with something, causing the equipment to malfunction.

The screen at Headquarters became distorted by static, like a bad signal for the radio or TV.

"What the hell?" Fear whispered, raising an eyebrow. This has never happened before.

And suddenly, a massive jolt of electricity traveled from Dream Productions to Headquarters, through all the equipment, and hit Fear.

"YEEOOOOWWWW!" He shrieked. His body and twitched danced in spasms. He began flashing like a light switch being flicked on and off.

The commotion was so loud and bright that the other five emotions woke from their slumber.

"Fear?" Joy called out, "What's going on out there?"

The other emotions rose up quickly. Anger, on the other hand, was not happy about being woken up.

"What's the big idea, Fear?" He demanded.

They all awoke from their room and headed downstairs to see their fellow emotion writhing in pain.

"Woah! Fear!" Disgust shrieked in horror.

They all stood back and watched. None of them knew what to do.

"I don't know how to approach this scenario," Logic stated, still looking as bored and uninterested as always.

Thankfully, after a couple more seconds, the lights faded, and Fear collapsed on the ground. The lights in headquarters went out, only a little light coming in from the glow of the massive library of memories outside.

The others stood back another moment, all waiting for Fear to get up and say something. Even Anger had forgotten how mad he was for being woken up. Now his face was filled only with concern.

"Fear?" He asked. "Buddy? You okay?" He took a step closer.

He stopped though when Fear seemed to be growing a little bigger. His arms got more muscular and harrier. His torso bulged out more as though the skinny emotion had been working out more. He grew to the size of a large refrigerator (or what would be a refrigerator for their size).

Disgust and Sadness both gasped.

Fear turned to face his five friends. All of them stayed quiet, waiting to see what he would say.

He glared at them. And then he took a deep breath and let out a great roar, bearing sharp teeth he hadn't had before.

The other five stood back, shocked.

Fear's angry glare shifted all around the room, and then he finally turned to the large console.

He leapt toward it, his hands – claws now, rather – grasped the sides of one end, nails digging into the metal. The metal screeched as Fear tried to wrench the console from its rooting. Wires snapped and sparked.

The other emotions stood in place, still too shocked to move or say anything.

Fear got one end of the console up off the ground, the other side still down, leaving the whole device leveled like a ramp.

"This is bad," Logic stated finally. "We should stop him."

Anger shook his head, snapping out of his stupor. "You're right!" He said. He charged toward Fear. "Hey knock it off!" He shouted. Logic followed at his usual pace.

Fear turned toward them. He smacked Anger with the back of his hand, sending the red emotion flying back. He smacked into Logic, and both went tumbling back.

Anger grunted in pain.

"Ow," Logic stated, as though he were saying a normal sentence.

Finally, Fear – or rather, the monster that was once Fear – had wrenched the console free from it's roots, and shoved it off, sending it sliding into the wall. On the floor where it once was a torn-up floor revealing sparkling wires and circuits.

"Fear! What are you doing?" Sadness called out.

Without any indication that he heard him, the monster reached down into the circuitry, grabbing handfuls of wires, and yanked them up through the floor. In his grip, the wires turned purple. The purple glow traveled through the wires and into the inner-workings of Head Quarters. Soon the entire room turned purple. The purple traveled down the pole holding Head Quarters up from the Abyss. The dome brightened up from its black nighttime setting. But this time, instead of its normal, bright sunny setting, it turned into a dark purple.

Andrew's eyes shot open, suddenly feeling absolutely horrified. He could see the wall across from his bed. What was actually his roommate, Tom's closet, now appeared to him like a large hole had been blown in the wall with explosives, and out from that hole, Freddy Fazbear and his three animatronic friends, from the video game _Five Nights at Freddy's_ , seemed to be standing there, staring at him.

Andrew couldn't move. Even if he could, he didn't want to. Part of him wanted to turn over and try to ignore the animatronics, but another part felt that the moment he looked away from them, they would attack. So he just lay there, unable to move.

Back in Headquarters, the monster released the wires, and then turned back to the other emotions. He gave another snarl, and then leapt through the window, smashing through the thick glass. He landed on the slim glass beam connecting Headquarters to Alcoholic's Island, and scurried across into the mindscape, like a squirrel running across a branch.

The other emotions, after another couple of seconds, finally snapped out of their stupor. Joy turned to Anger and Logic and rushed to their side to help them up.

"You guys okay?" He asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Anger replied.

"I am in pain, but not injured," Logic answered, rubbing his head where he had been hit.

"Oh man, this isn't good," Disgust said. "Andrew's awake. Tonight's really not a good night for this, not when we have so many papers coming. What do we do?"

"We should uh…" Sadness stuttered, "…I'll call some mind workers. Let's try to get the console fixed."

* * *

Within a few minutes, a few mind workers had arrived. Most of them were working on fixing the console, while one more had approached the emotions to talk. This one carried a clipboard, and he had a big nose and a walrus mustache, with his hard hat so low you couldn't see his eyes.

"Alright," he said. "Well the damage ain't all that serious. Don't worry. We'll have it fixed by morning."

"Okay, that's good," Joy replied. "But what about Andrew? Will he go back to sleep?"

"Eh, don't worry about it." The worker said with a shrug. "It's the biology department's problem now. Give him about thirty minutes or so. Eventually he'll get so tired that he can't stay awake any longer.

"Isn't there anything we can do to help him?"

"Nope. Don't look like it. Not with all your controls offline. He won't be feeling or thinking anything other than sheer terror 'till we get this fixed."

"What about Fear?" Sadness asked.

"What about 'em?"

"How long is he gonna stay like this?"

"I dunno." The worker replied, shrugging again. "Maybe he'll be better in the morning, maybe not."

"How did this happen anyway?" Joy asked.

"I wasn't there for the whole thing so I don't know that much," the worker answered. "Something about some a few fear and anger memories, some stress, one of the other workers doin' something really clumsy. I dunno exactly."

The worker looked back at the other workers doing their work.

"I'm gonna go back to work," he said. "You guys just hang back until we get it fixed, or go back to sleep or something."

None of the emotions really felt like sleeping. They were all too worried about Andrew and Fear.

They looked out the window. They could see parts of Long Term memory turning purple, as though a purple liquid were pooling over all the memories shelved there. It was obviously Fear's work.

Sadness spoke up. "I'll bet Andrew could get back to sleep more easily if Fear wasn't… uh… doing that."

"Well then it seems the best thing we can do for Andrew right now is clear," Logic added.

"Might as well," Disgust said. "Nothing we can do here."

"Okay then, let's get our tranq-guns," Joy said as he headed over to the weapons closet." They each got a tranquilizer rifle.

The train of thought was running again now that Andrew was awake, so they were able to hop aboard and take it to Long Term Memory.

"Alright guys," Joy announced as they all waited around in the car on the train. "I want to make this clear; based on all the horror movies and horror movie satires we've seen, splitting up in this case is suicide. So rule number one is that we are all going to stick together, all five of us, got it?"

Everyone nodded and murmured in agreement. Fear was normally Andrew's most dominant emotion, and therefore the leader of the six of them. Joy was second in command, since Andrew overall had a good life and a lot to be happy about.

"Do we know for sure that all the memories and Headquarters will return to normal if we can snap him out of this?" Sadness asked. " _Can_ we even snap him out of it? Will tranqing him work?"

"No guarantee about anything," Joy replied. "We don't know anything about any of this, but it's definitely worth a shot if you ask me."

"I'll take that chance," Disgust said with a nod.

"I'm gonna beat his face it for all this!" Anger growled.

"Woah man! Calm down!" Joy exclaimed. "It's not his fault! He doesn't have any control over any of this!"

"Yeah!" Disgust added. "He just got zapped. It's not like he chose to go on a rampage and tear everything apart."

"Eh, I guess you guys are right," Anger sighed. "I'm still pretty pissed about all this!"

"Yeah, we're all pretty frustrated," Sadness replied.

"Frustration will accomplish nothing," Logic stated.

Right at that moment, the train came to a stop. Everyone hopped out of the car. They could see the library that was Long Term Memory. All of the memories on that shelf had been turned purple, no doubt filling Andrew with more fear and dread.

The emotions wandered slowly around the mindscape for a while, rifles at the ready. They occasionally passed by a mind worker who had encountered fear. No one was bleeding or seemed to have a serious injury other than a concussion or a bruise. Some vehicles and equipment had been destroyed. Occasionally they encountered a few other mind workers, a security force. They were dressed in SWAT uniforms and also carried tranquilizer rifles.

Joy made sure they would use non-lethal means to subdue Fear. Logic reminded him that the only way to die here was to disappear from Andrew's memory in the Abyss. Still, nobody wanted Fear to be hurt.

After a while, they encountered someone else. He was sitting up against a shelf, groaning in pain, clutching his ribs, dressed in a familiar black cloak.

"Werdna!" Joy exclaimed as he ran towards him and knelt down at his side. "Are you okay?"

"Uh… hey guys," Werdna replied turning towards them.

"What happened?" Sadness asked.

"What do you think happened?" Anger growled. "Fear got him!"

"That was Fear?" Werdna asked. "For a second I thought it was Bigby Wolf."

"Well, last time I checked, Bigby can't do _that!_ " Anger replied, gesturing the shelf of purple memories.

"Yeah, that's a good point," Werdna chuckled lightly.

"How could he get you this bad anyway?" Anger asked. "I mean you're a wizard. What about your magic?"

"My magic was no match for his brute force," Werdna replied. "My spells seemed to bounce off of him like bullets bounce off the Hulk. He tore through them as if they were just smoke… which… it is all just smoke, but you know what I mean."

"Can you get up?" Joy asked.

Werdna lifted one hand as smoke began to flow into it, forming a crutch. He used it to push himself up off the ground. Joy backed away, seeing he could get up on his own.

No sooner had he gotten up that they heard a growling noise. They looked up to see Fear looking down on them from atop one of the shelves.

Logic was the first to raise his rifle and shot a few darts.

Fear leapt down and charged at them, but Logic kept shooting, and the others joined in.

Several darts stuck into Fear's shoulders, arms, head and chest. Finally, he collapsed and started snoring.

Very quickly, all of the memories in Long Term Memory turned back to their normal colors. Fear's muscular and hairy body shrank down again to his normal skinny stature.

Werdna and the other emotions were silent for a moment. It had all happened so fast.

"Well, that was a tad bit anticlimactic," Sadness said.

"Ah, who cares," Anger shrugged. "It's over. Now let's go back home." He picked up fear and slung him over his shoulder. "I won't pound him now, but we'll have a very serious talk in the morning."

"I'll go tell the mind workers that the problem's been dealt with," Werdna said.

The emotions all turned and headed back to the Train of thought, ready for bed. Hopefully the mind workers would have the console working again soon. They knew Andrew would be tired the next day, but nothing a little Red Bull wouldn't fix.

 **Author's Note: Long before college, I remember having quite a few instances of sleep paralysis during high school. This was just the most recent instance I could most vividly remember.**


	10. Fanfic Ideas

Andrew sat at home one morning at the table, alone, eating his breakfast, bowl after bowl of cereal. Because this task demanded such little focus, the emotions decided to pass the time by watching an old joyful memory; one of Andrew's favorite episodes of _The Nostalgia Critic_ , a comedian whose show centered around him reviewing bad movies and making fun of them.

An alert came up on the dashboard, indicating that the train of thought had arrived at Headquarters for a delivery.

"I'll get it!" Joy announced as he sprang from his seat and slid over to the doorway where the delivery would be dropped off.

The other five emotions stared back at the screen and watched the show. After a few minutes, Joy came back.

"Alright," He said. "We got some more daydreams, and – ooh!"

"What? What is it?" Fear asked.

"It's part of a manuscript for another fanfic idea!"

"Oh! Wow!" Fear paused the memory as he and the other emotions got up to have a look at the manuscript. Anger was slightly annoyed, as he was enjoying the show, but he got up anyway.

"So what's this one about?" Fear asked, clearly excited.

"Let's see…" Joy skimmed through the pages before answering. "It's a crossover between _Five Nights at Freddy's_ and _The Evil Within_. Sebastian and Joseph investigate the murders going on at the pizzeria!" He passed the manuscript around so everyone could have a look at it.

"Wow!" Anger exclaimed. "There's a part about Seb and Joseph interrogating Mike at his apartment! Andrew's already got most of their dialogue thought up. This is good stuff!" He looked through a bit more. "There's another part about them interrogating the manager!"

Sadness got to see next. "I like this one part about Seb talking to Joseph about how much he hates child murderers," he said. "It goes into Seb's character and his past with his family."

"Yeah!" Joy exclaimed. "This is a great idea! Can't wait to get around to writing it!"

* * *

That night at home though, Andrew did not get started on writing that fanfic like he and his emotions had planned earlier. Instead, after a long day of work, Andrew was happy to sit in the basement and play some video games, in this case, specifically, _Skyrim_.

In fact, Andrew did not get to work on the fanfic for the next couple of weeks. He seemed more interested in spending his free time either playing video games, watching TV shows and movies on Netflix, or going to the gym.

The fanfic was not discussed or addressed by Andrew or the emotions again until about two weeks later. Andrew was once again playing _Skyrim_ in the basement. Five out of the six emotions were watching Andrew playthrough with glee.

"Woo!" Anger cheered. "Take that, dragon!"

The illusion was broken when Logic cleared his throat, drawing everyone's attention to him.

"There is a matter that I think we need to discuss," he stated.

"Umm, okay, if you say so," Fear shrugged. "Assembly, everyone."

Andrew, playing his game, and being in the all-too-familiar state of pure bliss, didn't need any extra guidance from his emotions at the moment, so they left the console unattended as they got together at the table.

"It's about the fanfic idea," Logic started.

"Fanfic? What fanfic?" Fear asked.

"The crossover story between _Five Nights_ and _Evil Within_." Logic placed the manuscript on the table.

"Oh yeah! That one!" Joy exclaimed, nodding his head. "What about it?"

"Andrew is never going to get around to writing it, and we are never going to motivate him to do so. Therefore I propose we dispose of it."

"Woah woah what?" Joy stammered. "Bu – but it's such a great idea! You can't be serious!"

"Joy, this guy is _always_ serious," Anger grunted. "But yeah I'm with Joy. I mean it's a good idea! Lots of readers I'm sure will like it!"

Logic continued. "The fact of the matter is that a story of this premise demands a lot of time and commitment. And I am certain that neither we nor Andrew intend on committing that much to something that will have such a minuscule impact on Andrew's life.

"Miniscule impact?" Joy repeated. "What do you mean?"

"I mean Andrew will not make any money from it, and it is not applicable to any jobs or resumes. In other words, it is entirely unproductive.

"Well how's that any different from video games or TV?" Fear asked.

"Watching shows is productive in the sense that it increases Andrew's knowledge of media and entertainment, and video games are euphoric. Writing fanfics, however, is less euphoric, I'm sure we've all noticed.

"But… it's…" Joy stuttered, trying to think of a counter point.

"You're right, Logic," Sadness sighed. "Let's face it; at this point in our life, we have more important things to commit to and focus on than fanfics. We're gonna have to start working on our thesis soon, and then we'll be finding a job after college, and then we should try to write a real novel… it's just too much. Video games and TV shows are just a better use of our free time.

"But…" Finally, Joy relented and let out a sigh of defeat, unable to argue against the points Logic and Sadness were making.

"Well… okay then," Fear spoke up. "Are you guys sure about this? I mean I do still think it would be a neat story to write."

"There is no doubt," Logic replied.

"Fear sighed and hung his head. "Okay then."

"I'll do it," Sadness said. He got up from his seat and picked up the manuscript, and then headed over towards the Headquarters trashcan. Halfway there, he looked back at Joy and Fear, both of whom were clearly devastated by this decision.

"This sucks," Anger huffed.

Disgust, who had said nothing throughout this talk, was pouting, expressing his own disappointment.

"I'm sorry guys," Sadness whispered, finally reaching the trashcan. Without anymore hesitation, he dropped the manuscript down the can, knowing the pages would fall straight down through a pipe and down into the Memory Dump where the idea would fade away from Andrew's memory.

 **Author's Note: This is legitimately a problem I have with my fanfics, I get all these great ideas for long fanfics, but they're all really long ones and I can't or won't make time for them. Anyone else know this feeling? Having all these great fanfic ideas, but never the time to write them up?**


	11. Beer and Rum

Andrew and Tom had smuggled some alcohol into their dorm room and were about to sit down, relax and drink up. Andrew had gotten a case of beer while Tom had a bottle of rum.

"Alright!" Joy exclaimed, clearly excited. "Who's ready to get hammered?"

"Me! I am!" Anger and Disgust shouted over each other.

"Really hope we don't get caught," Fear whispered.

"Don't worry man!" Anger replied. "The tough part is over. We got it into the dorm."

Logic and Sadness seemed passive on the matter at hand, and simply went along with the others.

"Really hope we don't get sick either," Fear whispered, "Or get hungover tomorrow."

"Tomorrow is Saturday," Logic said.

"Yeah," Joy added. "We'll survive if we get hungover."

"Eh I guess you're right," Fear nodded. "Saturday is usually our layed-back day anyway."

Joy imputed the controls on the console, instructing Andrew to raise his first can of beer, along with Tom who was raising his first glass of rum.

* * *

Hi. Fear here. I'm just gonna run through how we are going to portray getting drunk in this story.

Ok. Now think of the stomach as a boiler, heating headquarters. I know that's not normally how it works, but just bear with me here.

When Andrew drinks, the alcohol goes into the stomach and is converted from a liquid to a gas. The gas then travels up to the head and flows all throughout the mindscape. So every air we breathe then for the next couple of hours is filled with alcohol.

It also gets very damp up there at the time, like in a rain forest.

Okay, I think that about sums it up. Back to the story.

* * *

"Hey," Tom asked once they finished their first drinks. "Want some Rum?"

Disgust's eyes widened in horror! "Rum? AHHH! NO!" He slammed his fist on a button.

"No thanks man," Andrew said to Tom. "I'm good." He reached for another beer.

"The alcohol from the first can is being integrated," Logic said observantly, looking over an indicator. "About a minute before tipsy sensation."

"Woah Disgust!" Joy exclaimed. "Calm down? What's wrong with Rum? I mean I know it's strong stuff and it burns, but-"

"Need I remind you guys what happened the first time we had rum?" Disgust asked.

He pressed another button, recalling a green memory orb. The memory was projected onto the screen. It showed Andrew in his dorm room, alone (Tom was gone for that weekend), sitting at his desk chair , leaning over a trashcan, vomiting. Every few seconds he would vomit again. Even when everything in his stomach had been launched out, he still continued to make the sound, occasionally coughing up yellow mucus.

"Oh yeah I remember that night," Fear said. "It was horrible!"

"Horrible only begins to describe it!" Disgust shouted back. "I can barely get near rum anymore without… " He paused for a second.

"What's wrong?" Sadness asked.

"Oh God!" Disgust whispered chokingly. He held his chest and looked down as though he was going to vomit. "We can smell it! I… I need to sit down…"

* * *

By the time Andrew had chugged his fourth beer, Disgust was sitting on the couch, breathing heavily into a brown paper bag. Fear at his side, trying to keep him relaxed.

"It's okay, Disgust," Fear said calmly. "Just breathe in… breathe out… breathe in… breathe out…" He would gesture with his hand, and Disgust would breathe in sync with his waving.

After another minute, the alcohol finally reached Andrew's mind. The entire mindscape suddenly became very warm and foggy. A few puddles of beer formed hear and there. And the six emotions felt very relaxed and happy.


	12. The Goatee

The sun rose over the college on a sunny spring morning. The six emotions slowly roused from their beds in the room they all shared, got their morning coffee, and headed downstairs into the control room. Fear was on Dream Duty last night.

"Morning Fear," Joy called out warmly. He was the first one down the stairs as usual. The others repeated after him.

"Morning guys!" Fear replied. Everyone saw that he was staring out the window into the mindscape. He had spoken without turning to face them. Clearly he was deep in thought.

"What are ya thinking about?" Disgust asked.

Fear turned to his coworkers. "Assembly everyone!"

Everyone shuffled to their assembly table where they usually had their conferences. Anger let out a slight grumble, annoyed at having a conference this early.

"Alright," Joy asked. "So what's this about?"

"Boys," Fear began, "I was thinking last night, mueling over a few things, and I had an idea!" He held up an idea light bulb he had been holding onto for everyone to see. "We've had the idea that college is the time to experiment and try new things, such as different hairstyles. We see others do it sometimes, but we don't. We've been sticking with our typical short-cut hair and clean-shaved face-"

"As were your instructions," Anger stated.

"Yes I know," Fear muttered. "But anyway, I think we should take advantage of that perception, that college is the time to experiment. Because once we're out of college, we might not have that much freedom, or-"

"Just get to the point man," Anger huffed, reminding him.

"Okay, okay," Fear stammered. "Now I had this idea, but I wasn't sure if we should go through with it, which is why I want your guys' opinions. I mean that's what conferences are all about. Of course now you don't have to agree with me-"

"Come on man!" Disgust growled. "What is it? Spit it out!"

"Boys," Fear spoke hurriedly, "I propose we grow a goatee."

Everyone was silent for one moment, processing the suggestion, trying to picture what Andrew would look like with a goatee.

"I'm on board for that!" Joy exclaimed, breaking the silence.

"A goatee?" Disgust repeated.

"Yep," Fear nodded confidently. "I just thought, why not?"

"You sure that's a good idea?" Disgust asked.

"I'm never sure about anything Dude," Fear chuckled.

"We can't really say for sure if we'd look good with a goatee," Disgust continued.

"I see no reasons why we shouldn't," Logic stated. "And if we decide we don't like it, we can always shave it off."

"Yeah," Anger nodded. "I'm on board!"

"But um…" Sadness spoke up. "Having a beard would mean more work, wouldn't it? Having to keep it trimmed and stuff?"

"Yeah, I thought a little about that too," Fear nodded.

"Well, we'll never know unless we go for it," Joy said. "YOLO, right?"

Everyone nodded and hummed in agreement.

"Alright then," Fear said. "Let's give it a go." He headed over to the console to plug in the idea.

* * *

A few days later, Andrew had grown out his beard, shaving only his cheeks, neck, and sideburns. There was a blob of short hair growing out on his upper lip, around his mouth, and down to his chin, almost in a perfect circle.

He looked himself in the mirror after shaving one morning, giving his emotions a good look as well.

"Lookin' good, big guy!" Fear exclaimed.

"Looks great!" Joy added.

"We look kinda like Walter White!" Anger grinned.

"Yeah, way better than that full-grown lumberjack beard we tried two years ago." Disgust added.

Even though Disgust, and therefore the other emotions, thought Andrew looked decent and like a rugged woodsman with a full-grown beard, Mom, Laura, and most of his aunts said it was hideous, mostly because of how he never trimmed it and never shaved the neck.

They all agreed now that Andrew's current goatee looked way better than that beard. Later that evening, Andrew texted a picture to Mom and Laura, and they both said they thought he looked good.

"So what do we say people?" Fear asked after the call. "Is this look a keep?"

He heard mostly murmurs of agreement.

"I don't know," one voice said, slightly louder than the others. Everyone turned to Sadness.

"I mean," he continued, "it just seems like so much work. We gotta be careful not to break the line when we shave, we gotta go out and buy an electric razor to trim it..."

"It's not really that much more work," Anger stated.

"Alright," Fear said. "Let's put it to a vote." He pulled out a gavel from his spot at the center of the console. "All those in favor of keeping the goatee?"

Four hands rose.

"Against?"

Sadness raised his hand. Logic abstained.

"Alright, the motion carries," Fear announced. "We're keeping the goatee!" He banged the gavel down on the wooden stopper on the console.

Suddenly, all of their faces began to glow a bright yellow. The flash vanished just as quick. Each emotion found that they had a goatee that matched Andrew's.

"Alright!" Anger cheered. "I'm loving this new look!"

"Me too!" Disgust shouted in agreement.

"I need a mirror!" Joy exclaimed, getting up from his seat. "I gotta see how I look." Anger and Disgust followed him.

Sadness looked a little mopey, having lost the vote. Fear got up from his seat, went over to him, and gently patted the shorter emotion's back.

"Ah don't worry about it, Sad," Fear said in an assuring tone. "I'm sure it won't be so bad. We'll get use to it… I hope."


	13. After College

It had been a fun summer. Andrew had treated it as any other summer after a working so hard the school year. He had graduated from college and gotten his B.A. in English, and was excited to start his career as a novelist and news writer.

But when fall came, things were not as Andrew or any of his emotions expected. He was still lifeguarding, and still living with Mom, Laura, and Michael, and hardly ever worked on his two novel ideas.

He had taken June and July off, and not truly seriously searching for jobs until August, after his Dad knocked some sense into him. He met with Dad for an afternoon on his boat, where Dad spent hours berating him, expressing disappointment in Andrew for not finding anything better than lifeguarding, feeling as though he had wasted his money sending Andrew to college. The entire afternoon drove Sadness and Anger mad, creating radiant blue and red memory.

Andrew put more time and effort into job searching since then, but even then, he could not find any available news reporting or publishing jobs like he wanted, and the ones he did find and applied for did not show interest in him.

Sadness was the one controlling Andrew the most these days since then, as Andrew felt sad about many things; his Dad's disappointment, which practically felt like Andrew had been disowned; he himself felt just as bad as Michael for not moving out and finding a better job than lifeguarding, feeling like less of a man. Andrew started feeling lonelier as he still had no girlfriend or sexual partners, and he began to see his other friends less and less.

Fear was almost always in a tizzy, fearing that Amdrew would never move out on his own and keep living with Mom and Laura just as Michael was, unsure of what the next big step in Andrew's life should be. He would also distress over not knowing what jobs to apply for or how exactly to apply for them.

Anger was frustrated with one of four things; Andrew's poor luck at job searching, Andrew's friends finding success, and Michael writing his fanfics while Andrew was struggling, boredom from lifeguarding, and Andrew's critical and berating father.

Andrew slowly began to drift apart from many of his college friends, leading to the Friendship Island core memory starting to fade. The Writer's Island memory began to fade as well as Andrew put less time and effort into his novels. Andrew stopped caring about his body and rarely did any exercise, causing Workout Island to fade and crumble completely.

Most of the mindscape had been taken over by the cruel and violent Darth Revan, Dark Lord of the Sith and the anti-hero of _Star Wars: K_ n _ights of the Old Republic_. Andrew had started playing the game over the summer, and loved it because Joy and the other emotions loved it. Characters from the game spawned on Fanboy Island as memories were created.

Sensing that Andrew was unhappy with his life, Revan had sent messages to Headquarters, promising to make Andrew happy by controlling headquarters and keeping Andrew obsessed with the game. Desperate to make Andrew happy again, Joy was intrigued by Revan's promises, and accepted his offer. Revan and his associates would board the Train of Thought, or their own ship, The Ebon Hawk, and arrive at headquarters to take control of Andrew's thoughts, driving his obsession with _KOTOR_ deeper, keeping him from thinking of anything else at times. Most often they would visit Headquarters when Andrew was lifeguarding and didn't have anything better to do or think about. Battle droids and Sith troopers would patrol all around the mindscape, asserting Revan's rule, guarding the important memories in Long Term Memory, ensuring Imagination Land would produce only daydreams and thoughts Revan approved of. Fanboy Island became Revan's fortress.

After finishing one playthrough, Andrew would always start another thinking "I should have gotten this item" or "I should have done this mission with this character. It became a cup that could not be filled, athirst that could not be quenched, an obsession, an addiction.

Under Revan's reign and influence, Andrew became complacent, stagnant, sluggish, lazy. When he was not lifeguarding, he would either play his games, binge watch shows on _Netflix_ ( _My Little Pony, Orange is the New Black, The Walking Dead_ ), or go out with his two best friends from high school, Ethan and Austin.

Fear, Sadness, and Anger openly spoke out against Joy and Revan, for they knew Andrew would have to move forward at some point, and they would see him through it.


End file.
